
“5426. We are apt to believe what we wish for.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
Cleopatra in Act IV, scene I
All for Love (1678)
“5426. We are apt to believe what we wish for.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
Ce qui nous fait croire si facilement que les autres ont des défauts, c'est la facilité que l'on a de croire ce qu'on souhaite.
Variant translation: What makes us believe so easily that others have faults is the ease with which we believe what we hope for.
Maxim 25 from the Manuscrit de Liancourt.
Later Additions to the Maxims
“We are what we think. To change how people act, we must change what they believe.”
His Long War: E Howard Hunt's American Spy (2007)
“What we need is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is its exact opposite.”
This was not Wordsworth's viewpoint at all. The words are in fact those of Bertrand Russell in his Sceptical Essays (1928), p. 157.
Misattributed
“Whether we believe in God depends very much on what we mean by God.”
Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 23, “A Sunday Sermon” (p. 330)
Source: Julian and Maddalo http://www.bartleby.com/139/shel115.html (1819), l. 14